Marx brothers, Mel Brooks, Peter Sellers, the original Saturday Night Live cast, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Gene Wilder, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Robin Williams I was obsessed. When I watched all of those actors I mentioned before, they were like my family growing up. I don't think I was funny until I was 16 years old, maybe 15. The audience is safe and watching that character. Acting is something that really allows that because you're safe in playing a character. I also think we have to be able to accept more of the nuance of making mistakes in life, the nuance of not being perfect.
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I think that we should keep investigating how to be responsibly provocative and observe our blind spots. I do believe that we need to keep evolving and changing and we shouldn't be further traumatizing any disenfranchised or oppressed groups. I'm not pointing a finger, Cancel culture this and cancel culture that, and oh no, no. It gives you the freedom to be flawed right now, which there isn't a lot of. The audience is protected in how they experience it, rather than some of the other arts where you're more directly relating the person to the piece that's being made. Acting is something where you can really present flaws in a safe, protected way. We're people who an audience can identify with. What do you think is the role of an actor on the broad spectrum of humanity? The first time I saw the Cassavetes movies and those actors, it's just like, That's another way I want to be. Whenever I see a new performance that inspires me-of new and of old that I haven't seen-it just reinvigorates me, like, This is the way to do it. I started to learn about acting, then I went to conservatory and it was all constantly illuminating still is. I was also obsessed with comedy as a kid, then I got into high school and I started to learn about plays and that got me more obsessed with acting in general. I started wanting to act when I saw A Night at the Opera when I was around six years old. He would drive me to college and we'd be getting high on the way there. My dad could smoke me under the dashboard. My father and my uncles were definitely the reason I smoked marijuana. That boisterous energy, that joy, was something that I wanted to always feel. They were very much like my second and third father because we all lived very close together. I wanted to be them because they made me feel like I was being brought up by a comedy team. First, I want to talk about the other parental figures in my life, my uncles, Allen and Andy, who were huge figures of comedy to me. He was a great parental figure who made me feel really seen. So he would talk to me about my favorite Mel Brooks or Eddie Murphy or Peter Sellers movies. I was always weird too, because I loved comedy and I loved movies and I didn't really like love sports. People usually think that it's associated with physical rituals but it's also true with mental rituals and obsessive thinking. Turns out I have obsessive compulsive disorder. Jay Hirsch, who I basically had a nervous breakdown in front of when I was in the fourth grade.īecause of kids at school, I still felt like I had done something wrong, so I started seeing a psychiatrist and then realized that I was obsessing about a lot of things. And I strive to have a little bit more of his simplicity. I think it's also what made me become vastly introspective, but I also think that I do too much questioning sometimes. There was definitely some toxic masculinity going on and in the end I rejected it. Whereas my mother, my sister and I very obsessively examined and questioned everything. Because I saw that he'd sort of shoot himself in the foot with his silence and his unwillingness to explore his feelings I also saw the benefit of his toughness and the simplicity in his outlook. He was a very silent, stoic, private figure-did not believe in sharing his emotions a lot. My father, who was a very tough Jew, went to the gym every day and he was not somebody who took any shit from anyone. Tell me a bit about your upbringing and how the paternal figures in your life impacted who you are today? It is every genre taken to the millionth percent. Below, Brett and I discuss his upbringing and subsequent path to acting, the woes of childhood neuroticism, budding sexuality and obsessive compulsive disorder, what comedy means to him, which brands and stores he loves, his role in the new season of Stranger Things-"It's one of the greatest things ever made and this season is high fucking octane.
He’s also about embracing its quirks, along with his own. Gelman calls himself “Jaddy,” a portmanteau of Jewish and daddy, and is all about embracing the strength and resilience that comes with his heritage.